Nav Log 08
The ship arrived at the Mechanus station of Echidna, a lonely hollowed out rock and pulled in to dock. Aboard, the senior staff went shopping. Gears was disappointed in the range of armaments, but I managed to pick up some old and well preserved Pressurised Carapace Armour which the Mechanus Artisans fitted to me until it was like a second skin. It felt like wearing a body glove. I also scheduled an appointment to have my augmetics upgraded as they didn't quite have the power I needed. The set I was able to find was exquisite and formerly belonged to a long line of tech priests so had been meticulously maintained. The Captain found himself an equally venerable melta-gun and Walker picked up a pristine Bolt gun that had never before been used that was dug out of a storage cache. So we were delighted with our purchases. The Captain was reluctant to put in for an extended dock as he wanted to make a fast course to Elysium to confront whoever sent the Ork Freebootaz after him. I tried to advise that we didn't really have the firepower to go toe to toe with any warship worthy of the title without severe losses. After a morning of retail therapy we met with the station commander who plied us with his finest alcohol. When he said alcohol, he did not mean alcohol mixed with anything else, 100% straight alcohol suitable for getting the stains out of deck plates. I barely choked it down and Walker declined. Marcone managed it with barely a wince but gears managed to regurgitate it over the deck plating and was helpfully offered another. Then down to business, he mentioned that one of his ships had been shot down on a distant world nearly 2 weeks warp journey away. We just needed to rescue the twenty or so crew and were given a drop pod, a gun cutter and a handful of Skitari troops to assist with the opperation. In exchange they offered a warp-drive that would far surpass our current drive in terms of speed. So we agreed that we would set out as soon as the ship was refuelled. Back on the ship I spoke to Senechal Hill about the prospects for finding the Captain a wife. He needs an heir to secure his position, and so I did some research with Senechal Hill and found that there was a young eligible heir to the Mensche Dynasty on Echidna at the moment. She's 21, tall imposing and utterly ravishing. So I thought this would be a better choice than the station commanders daughter, a 67 year old highly augmented tech priestess. Anyway the invitations were sent and accepted, she was invited aboard but the captain did not meet her at the airlock and decided to have a romantic meal on the secondary bridge, All well and good, the shutters were opened to give a view of the nearby star. As soon as she came aboard with her muscular bodyguard Gretta, a twin power-sword wielding amazon, she claimed disappointment with not being met, with the location of the dining arrangements and it got worse from there on. She had dinner with the Captain and I waited outside. Then the chef came back out white faced, saying that she had ordered a green thai chicken curry with no spice. He would be a laughing stock if he served up something so flavourless. I suggested that maybe we could substitute out some more heavily flavoured meats or add some subtle spices and perhaps confound her attempts at asking the impossible. So I raced to see Hill in the hopes that our deep supply vaults may have something useful that could help and I said that it would not matter what it was as long as it worked. She said she would take care of it. The next thing I know quite a while later is that our guest had passed out at the meal table. Apparently Hill found some upper class intoxicant and simply passed out into her food. Although the Captain was no worse for wear. Apparently she just couldn't handle it. Anyway the thoroughly drugged Heiress was revived and the Medicae identified the drug at fault. The chef was summoned and shortly later so was Hill. Thankfully we managed to salve the incident by Walker and Hill suggesting that this was an innocent mistake and that the drug was meant to be a mild aphrodisiac rather than an opiate. They seemed to buy it but promised consequences for this action. Marcone bought everybody in seemingly one at a time after having us fill out an incident report and I confessed my role in it. Thankfully the consequences at the moment seem to be minimal, but despite the drugged heiress giving him her vox codes, it seems unlikely he would return the call. He instead asked that we find him a good party in future rather than trying to set him up on dates.